Feminists today are re-imagining nature, biology, and matter in feminist thought and critically addressing new developments in biology, physics, neuroscience, epigenetics and other scientific disciplines. Mattering, edited by noted feminist scholar Victoria Pitts-Taylor, presents contemporary feminist perspectives on the materialist or ‘naturalizing’ turn in feminist theory, and also represents the newest wave of feminist engagement with science. The volume addresses the relationship between human corporeality and subjectivity, questions and redefines the boundaries of human/non-human and nature/culture, elaborates on the (...) entanglements of matter, knowledge, and practice, and addresses biological materialization as a complex and open process. This volume insists that feminist theory can take matter and biology seriously while also accounting for power, taking materialism as a point of departure to rethink key feminist issues. The contributors, an international group of feminist theorists, scientists and scholars, apply concepts in contemporary materialist feminism to examine an array of topics in science, biotechnology, biopolitics, and bioethics. These include neuralplasticity and the brain-machine interface; the use of biometrical identification technologies for transnational border control; epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of the health effects of social stigma; ADHD and neuropharmacology; and randomized controlled trials of HIV drugs.A unique and interdisciplinary collection, Mattering presents in grounded, concrete terms the need for rethinking disciplinary boundaries and research methodologies in light of the shifts in feminist theorizing and transformations in the sciences. (shrink)

The rise of neuroplasticity has led to new fields of study about the relation between social inequalities and neurobiology, including investigations into the “neuroscience of poverty.” The neural phenotype of poverty proposed in recent neuroscientific research emerges out of classed, gendered, and racialized inequalities that not only affect bodies in material ways but also shape scientific understandings of difference. An intersectional, sociomaterial approach is needed to grasp the implications of neuroscientific research that aims to both produce and repair neurobiological difference. (...) Following Benjamin’s critique of the “carceral imagination” of technoscience, this article considers how such research may fix in terms of helping, or in contrast, fix by classifying and reifying, vulnerable subjects. I address the potential for biosocial determinism in linking neural phenotypes and social problems. I use an intersectional approach to consider the presence and absence of race in this body of research and explore how some methodological and conceptual framings of the “brain on poverty” mark poor and minority children for intervention in concert with neoliberal approaches to poverty. (shrink)

The widely touted discovery of mirror neurons has generated intense scientific interest in the neurobiology of intersubjectivity. Social neuroscientists have claimed that mirror neurons, located in brain regions associated with motor action, facial recognition, and somatosensory processing, allow us to automatically grasp other people's intentions and emotions. Despite controversies, mirror neuron research is animating materialist, affective, and embodied accounts of intersubjectivity. My view is that mirror neurons raise issues that are directly relevant to feminism and cultural studies, but interventions are (...) needed for the work to be compatible with nonreductionist critical thought. In this article I critique the dominant neuroscientific account of mirror neurons, called embodied simulation theory. I draw from feminist epistemologies as well as alternative interpretations of mirror neurons in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to consider mirroring as situated, embodied perception. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the media's framing of non-mainstream body modification as a social problem. I demonstrate, through an analysis of a sample of 35 newspaper articles on body modification, that a mutilation discourse is one of the dominant frames of meaning used to make sense of body modifiers in the mainstream media. This framing, which effects the pathologization of body modifiers, utilizes the claims making of mental-health experts and relies on a gendered account of body modification as (...) a social problem. While news accounts are a medium for presenting body modification to a large `community of speakers', I find that they have precluded the legitimacy of the claims of subcultural actors. I argue from a poststructuralist perspective that body modifiers' `claims from the underside' are subjugated by accounts that problematize body modification through the dominant discourse of the mental-health model. I suggest that this frame is problematic for its silencing of `underside' or marginal embodied knowledges, which include, for example, alternative accounts of female embodiment. (shrink)

This article considers women's use of the body as a site of protest by taking up women's participation in non-mainstream body modification. The use of scarification, multiple genital piercing and other practices by women in the lesbian SM movement has been considered self-mutilative (Jeffries, 1994). This article takes a different, but not uncritical, approach by examining the `reclaiming' discourse surrounding these practices and considering how this discourse reflects the feminist poststructuralist project of identity subversion.

The brain matters. Says the opening line from Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics. On the face of it, the human brain matters inasmuch as it is the body’s central information processing organ; the CEO that presides over many of our executive bodily functions. But the brain matters beyond the ways in which it has biologically evolved and currently processes information. The brain also matters in social thought, as neuroscientific research has historically informed widespread perceptions (...) of certain bodies and persons at the social and institutional level. Moreover, the brain is embodied, and bodies accrue social and political meanings beyond what they represent at the level... (shrink)

This essay argues that attention to Adam Smith’s ironic framing of his historical narratives in the Wealth of Nations shows his critique of modern commercial society to have been more radical than is generally recognized. These narratives traced the pathologies of European development and the complex chains of causation that linked Smith’s readers—with often destructive and even catastrophic results—to other human beings distant from themselves. While Smith gave reasons to doubt that sympathy for distant others could bring about reform, I (...) argue that he used irony and what he called ridicule to make the book’s British audience aware of the violence of the global commercial system and their place in it as both abettors and lesser victims of its abuses. (shrink)

Taking its direction from references to Black and Indigenous struggles present in Leonard Harris’ oeuvre, this chapter turns to politicized acts of resistance among Black and Indigenous communities. More specifically, the essay traces the functions of cultural pluralism, value relativism, and representative heuristics within solidarity work that enact logics of resistance to settler colonization and anti-Black racism, among other forms of oppression. Through this analysis, we see that Harris’ views about insurrection and normativity entail that both oppression and resistance are (...) the result of multiplicitous forms of agency. (shrink)

The debate over the improvement of moral capacity or moral enhancement through pharmacology has gained momentum in the last decade as a result of advances in neuroscience. These advances have led to the discovery and allowed the alteration of patterns of human behavior, and have permitted direct interventions on the neuronal structure of behavior. In recent years, this analysis has deepened regarding the anthropological foundations of morality and the reasons that would justify the acceptance or rejection of such technology. We (...) present a review of proposals for pharmacological interventions directed directly towards moral enhancement. In addition, we identify the ethical dilemmas that such interventions may generate, as well as the moral assessment of the authors of these studies. There is a moderate consensus on the risks of any intervention on the intimate structure of the human condition, its autonomy and identity, but there are large differences in explaining the reasons for this concern and especially in justifying such interventions. These findings show that it is necessary to investigate the moral assessment of authors and the ethical dimension within the field of pharmacology in order to identify future trends. (shrink)

This document collects discussion and commentary on issues raised in the workshop by its participants. Contributors are: Greg Frost-Arnold, David Harker, P. D. Magnus, John Manchak, John D. Norton, J. Brian Pitts, Kyle Stanford, Dana Tulodziecki.

The managerial ethics literature is used as a base for the inclusion of Ethical Attribution, as an element in the consumer's decision process. A situational model of ethical consideration in consumer behavior is proposed and examined for Personal vs. Vicarious effects. Using a path analytic approach, unique structures are reported for Personal and Vicarious situations in the evaluation of a seller's unethical behavior. An attributional paradigm is suggested to explain the results.

Historical, cultural and professional factors have contributed to stigma and secrecy regarding addiction in the medical profession and there are calls to improve education in this area. This paper argues that physician-penned literature plays an important role in raising awareness of substance misuse in the medical profession. Bulgakov’s short story Morphine documents the decline of Dr Polyakov and illustrates a number of salient professional issues such as self-medication, abuse of authority and risks to patients. Physician-penned literature such as Morphine is (...) of value in medical education as it offers a route into sensitive topics and an authoritative and insider perspective that is attractive to students and physicians alike. (shrink)

La eugenesia, privada de su sentido peyorativo, se presenta como una posibilidad propiciada por los avances biotecnológicos, que apunta a objetivos terapéuticos, en principio, no reprobables. A la filosofía le compete aclarar los distintos sentidos de eugenesia, poner coto a la fascinación creciente por un supuesto determinismo genético, y mostrar que la distinción entre lo terapéutico y no terapéutico no es estática ni invariable. Todo ello con el objetivo de exigir más rigor en los planteamientos éticos derivados de las distintas (...) prácticas biotecnológicas. No obstante, el filósofo busca una base ontológica más consistente para enfrentarse a problemas como el de la eugenesia. El último libro de Habermas es un ejemplo de ello constituyendo un rechazo de la “eugenesia liberal” que es vista como una amenaza a la integridad de la persona y a su autocomprensión como ser libre. Este artículo pone en cuestión que el recurso a la ontología sea el mejor método para abordar los problemas de la bioética, cuya solución no depende tanto de una determinada concepción de la especie humana, como de la capacidad de hacer un uso responsable de la libertad. (shrink)

The human enhancement debate is fundamentally based on divergent ideals of human flourishing. Using the complementary, though often contrasting, foci of creaturehood and deification as fundamental to the good life, we examine these visions of human flourishing inherent in transhumanist, secular humanist and critical posthumanist positions on human enhancement. We argue that the theological anthropologies that respond to human enhancement and these other ideologies tend to emphasise either creaturehood or deification to the neglect or detriment of the other. We propose (...) in response that understanding humans as creatures bound for glory integrates both dimensions of the human being into the one grand vision of flourishing God has for humanity. (shrink)

Trans philosophy—like everything else—has a history. The 1990s was a pivotal decade for the academic development of trans philosophy in the United States and Canada. During this period, the broader interdisciplinary field of transgender studies was beginning to emerge, and professional philosophy’s own contributions to transgender studies were starting to take shape as well. In what follows, we hear from Talia Mae Bettcher, Loren Cannon, Miqqi Alicia Gilbert, and Jacob Hale, four trans philosophers whose writings and activism helped provide the (...) contours of what is now becoming a robust and thriving area of study within academic philosophy. (shrink)

In this special issue, our objective is to clarify what biosemioticians may mean insofar as they claim that living systems are capable of making choices or that biosemiotic interpretations are partially indeterminate. A number of different senses of the term “chance” are discussed as we move toward a consensus. We find that biosemiosic chance may arise out of conditions involving quantum indeterminacy, randomness, deterministic chaos, or unpredictability, but biosemiosic chance is mainly due to the fact that living entities invest their (...) environments with different meanings and values, which are not inherent in the material aspects. Accordingly, interpretive responses are in part self-determined. A self-determined interpretation may be thought of as a process in which localized biases constrain the probabilities of the outcomes of the interactions between an agent and its environment. The agent’s internal formal constraints that are defined by similarity and proximity are relative and, as such, vague, and thus interpretation may be somewhat underdetermined and involve an element of chance. (shrink)

Una de las cuestiones a que se enfrenta la teoría de la argumentación jurídica, y a la que se dedica este trabajo, es poner de relieve el papel que las valoraciones tienen en el proceso de aplicación del derecho. Las razones valorativas juegan un papel más importante que el que la concepción positivista del derecho suele advertir. En muchos casos las decisiones judiciales no pueden justificarse en el propio derecho, sino en valoraciones ajenas al mismo. Esto no debe significar que, (...) en este ámbito, aquellas sean necesariamente arbitrarias, pero sí discrecionales, lo que conlleva que deben establecerse algunos criterios de racionalidad; criterios que no son ya jurídicos, sino de carácter moral o ético. (shrink)

Este trabajo sostiene que Egidio Romano y Dante Alighieri han utilizado el Liber de Causis como fuentede sus tratados de filosofía política. Asimismo, ambos autores han trasladado al ámbito político el modelode causalidad neoplatónico para defender tesis opuestas respecto del problema de la autonomía de los poderesespiritual y temporal. Mientras que, para fundamentar la intervención directa del papa en los asuntosdel poder temporal, Egidio postula la anulación de las causas segundas que actúan sobre la realidad; en la teoríade Dante sobre (...) el imperio, la no cancelación de los poderes intermedios entre el emperador y los súbditospermite establecer conceptualmente una cierta autonomía del poder temporal respecto del espiritual.This paper argues that the Liber de Causis was a source for both Egidio Romano`s and Dante Alighieri`s philosophical and political treatises. Both authors used a Neoplatonic model of causality in orderto sustein opposite theories on the relationship between temporal and spiritual powers. Egidio bases thedirect intervention of the pope in temporalibus on the annulment of the second causes which operate inCreation. On the contrary, in Dante`s political theory, the intermediary powers between the emperor and the subjects are precisely that which allows —from a theoretical point of view— a certain independence of the temporal power from the spiritual one. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Ce texte porte sur l'élaboration des politiques publiques à partir d'une perspective conséquentialiste basée sur les probabilités. En utilisant l'exemple de la dissuasion par la menace nucléaire, je montre que ceux qui sont véritablement dévoués à la protection de l'environnement, ceux qui se soucient véritablement du problème de l'environnement devraient refuser le conséquentialisme basé sur les probabilités sans le principe de la reconsideration, un principe que nous proposons ici pour la première fois, le principe de la reconsideration doit être (...) adopté parce que, sans lui, le conséquentialisme basé sur les probabilités pourrait justifier qu'on poursuive l'application de politiques même lorsque celles-ci se sont révélées inadéquates, et même lorsqu'elles minent elles-mêmes leurs chances de succès. On peut ainsi conclure que le principe de la reconsidération est nécessaire pour assurer le lien entre les politiques justificatrices et leur succès. ABSTRACT This paper examines the making of public policy from a probability-based consequentialist perspective. Using nuclear deterrence policies as an example, I show that those truly committed environmental protection, those who truly care about the environment should not accept probability-based consequentialism without the reconsideration principle, a principle introduced in this paper. The reconsideration principle must be accepted, because without it, probability-based consequentialism can justify continuing to act on policies even when they have failed, and even when they undermine their original goal altogether. Thus, we conclude that the reconsideration principle is neeaed to insure connection between the justification policies and their success. (shrink)

La II Conferencia Internacional El lugar del archivo de las violencias de Estado: reorganizaciones del poder bajo el neoliberalismo se desarrolló los días 2, 3, 9 y 10 de septiembre de 2021. Fue organizada por el Proyecto Anillos de Investigación “Tecnologías Políticas de la memoria: usos y apropiaciones contemporáneas de artefactos de registro de la violencia política”, de la Universidad Alberto Hurtado, el Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos y la Universidad Austral de Chile. A su vez, contó (...) con la colaboración de Memoria Abierta (Argentina), el grupo de investigación “Representaciones contemporáneas de perpetración de crímenes de masas” (España) y el Núcleo Milenio Arte, Performatividad y Activismo (Chile). En ese marco y como parte del panel “Activismos y registros feministas”, se presentó la ponencia “Si una mujer avanza, ningún hombre retrocede”, desarrollada por el equipo de trabajo del proyecto Insumisas de Memoria Abierta. La presentación que, a continuación compartimos, estuvo a cargo de Maisa Bascuas, Victoria Daona y Nancy Lucero y fue moderada por Alejandra Oberti quien junto a Verónica Torras coordinan el proyecto. (shrink)

G.W.F. Hegel focuses his treatment of Sophocles' drama, Antigone , in the Phenomenology of Spirit, on the ideal of mutual recognition. Antigone was punished with death for performing the burial ritual honoring her brother, Polyneices, to whose irreplaceability she attests in her well-known speech of defiance. Hegel argues that Antigone's loss of Polyneices was the irreparable loss of reciprocal recognition. Only in the brother sister relation, Hegel thought, could there be equality in mutual recognition. I argue that this equality cannot (...) be found in a marriage union with a husband or in the public sphere of civil society. Situating Hegel's account of marriage in the Philosophy of Right within the history of marriage and historical literature on the emerging market economy of Hegel's time, I demonstrate that Hegel's perception of equality in the reciprocal recognition of the brother sister relation was a function of both economic realities and his relationship with his sister, Christiane. I show desire in the Phenomenology to be the desire for dominance, and I show the brother sister relation to be free of desire. (shrink)

Charles Taylor's seminal essay “The Politics of Recognition,” which made the “vital human need” for recognition into one of contemporary politics' most pressing concerns, has since its appearance almost fifteen years ago generated a rich and impressive range of commentaries.1 Few of these, however, focus on Taylor's expressivist understanding of identity as self-realization through expression.2 By not taking expressivism into account as one of the key themes implicitly underpinning his recognition theory, these commentaries have obscured a central dimension of his (...) thinking about identity formation. Taylor's theory is often seen as anchored in a tension between two different ideas of…. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo revelar el contexto de surgimiento y los componen- tes teóricos - metodológicos de un programa de formación doctoral sobre patrimo- nio cultural con enfoque interdisciplinar, elaborado en el marco de un Programade Cooperación Internacional. En lo metodológico, se propició el desarrollo de una metodología cualitativa sin desestimar lo cuantitativo. Los impactos del programa revelan un nivel superior de calidad de los procesos formativos en la Universidad de Oriente, el perfeccionamiento de competencias académicas y científicas al (...) servicio de la sociedad, así como su contribución a las dimensiones curriculares y extracurri- culares del pregrado. (shrink)

Lavoie and Talwar examine the phenomenon of prosocial lie telling: lying with the intention to benefit others. They investigate how well children aged 4 to 11 are able to conceal information about a surprise gift from their parents based on these children’s responses to their parents’ questions. Lavoie and Talwar conclude that, as children’s theory of mind abilities and working memory improve, their ability to conceal information from others also develops.

. In this paper, we consider the nature of recent corporate abuses both in the U.S. and in Europe, and how globalization has had an impact on amplifying their consequences. We discuss the rules-based and principles-based remedies that have been proposed in each region, respectively. With a focus on the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA), we examine the principles forwarded by this act, and how it addresses those principles with specific rules and governance mechanisms. Invoking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT), we (...) conclude with a reconciliation of the principles and rules-based approaches to corporate governance as suggested by theory. (shrink)

This article discusses Philip Pettit’s neo-republicanism in light of the criterion of self-sustenance: the requirement that a political theory be capable of serving as a self-sustaining public philosophy for a pluralist democracy. It argues that this criterion can only be satisfied by developing an adequate politics of virtue. Pettit’s theory is built around the notion of freedom as non-domination, and he does not say much about the virtues of citizens or the policies the state may employ to encourage their development. (...) In order to explain the motivation to comply with republican laws that promote non-domination, Pettit relies on the phenomenon of civility and the mechanism of the intangible hand. But to understand what underlies an adequate level of robust civility one needs to focus on the more basic phenomenon of personal virtue. Policies that aim to promote non-domination should take into account the need to cultivate virtue among citizens, as well as the full range of conditions that favor its exercise. (shrink)

Ehrenfeucht’s lemma asserts that whenever one element of a model of Peano arithmetic is definable from another, they satisfy different types. We consider here the analogue of Ehrenfeucht’s lemma for models of set theory. The original argument applies directly to the ordinal-definable elements of any model of set theory, and, in particular, Ehrenfeucht’s lemma holds fully for models of set theory satisfying V=HOD. We show that the lemma fails in the forcing extension of the universe by adding a Cohen real. (...) We go on to formulate a scheme of natural parametric generalizations of Ehrenfeucht’s lemma, namely, the principles of the form EL, which asserts that P-definability from A implies Q-discernibility. We also consider various analogues of Ehrenfeucht’s lemma obtained by using algebraicity in place of definability, where a set b is algebraic in a if it is a member of a finite set definable from a. Ehrenfeucht’s lemma holds for the ordinal-algebraic sets, we prove, if and only if the ordinal-algebraic and ordinal-definable sets coincide. Using a similar analysis, we answer two open questions posed earlier by the third author and C. Leahy, showing that algebraicity and definability need not coincide in models of set theory and the internal and external notions of being ordinal algebraic need not coincide. (shrink)